I have earned the double degree for an excessive work effort and I have attended additional classes to receive sufficient ECTS points to finish the two degrees in the time frame of 3 years.

I spend the last year for completion of the double degree program at University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland Australia. This experience presented me with challenges of international scale, cooperating, living and studying in a multicultural society. I am glad and proud to have finished the program and would take any other opportunity presented to me, to go abroad again.

Monday the 22nd of November Mayor, Lars Krarup spoke as the last guest lecturer in the Thought-Leader Series second season. It was an exciting day for me personally, since it is not every day you get to meet the mayor.

Lars Krarup has been mayor for 9 years, and was when he was elected, among the youngest mayors ever elected in Denmark. Lars is daily responsible for 9000 employees which he only can describe as a mouthful. However he finds his job very interesting and assured the audience and I, that there was never a day looking like the day before. One of the problems you are facing when you have 9000 employees is that you don’t know every single one of them, and therefor does Lars also put an honor in personally welcoming new employees working at the city hall.

Even though Lars Krarup today is a well-respected and popular mayor, the story of how he ended up at the city hall is far from usual.

Lars carries around a scare on his hand from the time he was a trainee to become a butcher. That was where his career started, at the local butcher, where he was taught a lot about sales and service. The important aspect was to treat the costumers with respect and please them, so they would come back.

At some time Lars looked at himself and realized that it was time to try something new and he became a sales man for the Danish Beer Brand Tuborg. Within Tuborg, Lars advanced and grew to become a key account manager for Tuborg, and was later selected for the team, which mission was to merge the two sales departments of Tuborg and Carlsberg. This was where Lars got the interest for strategy and leadership and when offered the position as CEO of the Blue Fox (Herning Ice Hockey), the answer was yes.

At Herning Blue Fox Lars learned about the difference between black and white. In the word of sport there is only one thing that counts: “TO WIN”

It was very much a coincidence that Lars was elected the mayor of Herning. And looking back at Lars’s career, everything has seemed to be randomly coming to him. This was also one of the messages he wanted the students to understand. Lars does not really believe in career planning but he has been really successful with the things he has accomplished. Why this is so is according to Lars himself, that when he is confronted with a task, he goes all in. As he said: “There are no easy ways to continuous success.” By this should be understood that you might be lucky to be elected the mayor, without any particular efforts. But to remain successful as mayor for 9 years, it takes hard work and effort.

“There are no easy ways to continuous success.”

As Mayor, Lars Krarup is today using one of the first lessons he was taught as a butcher trainee: To sell a good service so people will come back. Because even though Lars is working for a public institution, he prefers to see it as business that needs to make a profit to survive. Therefore is Lars also putting a great honor in employing the greatest people to do the job, even though they might be smarter and brighter than himself. This approach is also what have lead Herning to be one of the most successful regions in Denmark, where the distance from though to action is very short.

The meeting with Lars Krarup was a great experience and both the students and I learned more about the system and the man who makes Herning a great place to live.

Monday the 8th of November the CEO of EG A/S, Bjarne Aarup visited me at Aarhus University Institute of Business and Technology to speak at the Thought-Leader Series. Bjarne Aarup spoke about his career and bewitched the audience with a great story of journey that stated in 1985 at IBM after he finished his bachelor.

It was more or less a coincidence that Bjarne Aarup ended up at IBM but he expressed great satisfaction with his choice, and did also have 9 good years at IBM. He told about how he had been accepted to a trainee program at IBM, and how IBM made its employees feel like rock stars. He told about an experience where he together with a bunch of other IBM trainees had been flying first class to Stockholm and accommodated at first class hotel to celebrate their success. What IBM did was to make its employees feel invincible, and able to walk the water.

After IBM Bjarne Aarup totally shifted career track and went from bits and bytes to working with humans at Marcuri Urval A/S. It was a major change but it taught him a lot about how human beings act and behave in different situations. The experiences were very valuable and had taught him treasured lessons that he is using in his daily job as CEO of EG A/S.

In 1997 Bjarne Aarup was invited to join what was then called EDB Gruppen A/S, as “Intellectual Capital Manager” which might have been the fanciest title Bjarne Aarup has ever possessed. Since 1997 he has been an important part of EG A/S and was in 2005 announced the CEO of EG Denmark.

EG A/S is one of Denmarks largest providers of IT solutions and employs 904 people with a yearly turnover of 924 million. EG was originally owned by IBM but was in 2008 sold to the capital fund Nordic Capital. Bjarne Aarup explained how it was easier to be owned by a capital fund, than being listed on the stock exchange. Because the capital fund is more flexible and has a longer perspective on its investment, then the stock exchange expecting a short term yield.

EG A/S wants to be Denmark’s best workplace and does a lot to let the employees find a good balance between private life and work life. As Bjarne Aarup said: “The employees must be inspired in there private life, so they can inspirable at work.”

Bjarne Aarup finds great excitement in strategy and has been working a lot with strategies such as the Blue Ocean Strategy, Balance Scorecard, and Value Proposition. He mentioned that EG A/S has worked so much with choice of business models, that they can see if a business is making money or not. However Bjarne Aarups favorite strategy that has turned EG A/S upside down is LEAN. It is very hard to implement new strategies and often you spend a weekend in some fancy conference facility preparing and setting up the employees to operate with the new strategy, but Monday morning everything is as it used to be. Therefore is it also very important to implement a new strategy fully in all departments.

EG A/S has been very successful with the implementation of LEAN and Bjarne Aarup expressed that is was one of the best strategies he had ever worked with. He had been very surprised with results and it is amazing how fixing of small annoyances can change the efficiency percentage radically.

Every week every department is meeting for a short blackboard meeting where all small irritations and things that can be improved are broad up. One is quickly found to solve the problem and the employees are back to work happier and more focused than before. After the fully implantation of LEAN in the organization, EG A/S experienced a 25% increase in efficiency. Bjarne Aarup told that when you fix small problems like a door being locked that could be unlocked you make people think of what is important instead of, why the door is locked.

Bjarne Aarup ended his lecture with telling about his involvement in different networks. What to be noticed here is that he uses his networks as education with real life cases from other companies. As he said “Education is much more fun and interesting when you have experiences from the real business life, which you can connect with the theory.”

Bjarne Aarup held an inspiring and exciting lecture, and the attending students have positively commented with huge excitement.
The next Thought-Leader Series will be the Mayor of Herning Lars Krarup, who will be speaking the 22nd of November at AU-IBT.